A screenshot from a video Scott Wagner, the Republican candidate for Pennsylvania governor, posted to his Facebook page Friday morning in which threatened to put on golf shoes and “stomp all over” Gov. Tom Wolf’s face. The video has since been taken down and Wagner apologized.

A screenshot from a video Scott Wagner, the Republican candidate for Pennsylvania governor, posted to his Facebook page Friday morning in which threatened to put on golf shoes and “stomp all over” Gov. Tom Wolf’s face. The video has since been taken down and Wagner apologized.

Scott Wagner has dropped his baseball bat in favor of golf spikes to purge incumbent Gov. Tom Wolf from office.

In a campaign video he made Friday morning, Wagner, the Republican candidate for Pennsylvania governor, threatens to put on golf shoes and “stomp all over” Gov. Tom Wolf’s face before the Nov. 6 election.

Wolf’s campaign responded to Wagner’s latest verbal reference to violence by calling him “unhinged and unfit” for public office.

Legal experts called the threat constitutional under the First Amendment’s freedom of speech clause.

Wagner later apologized.

The Facebook video shows Wagner standing along a York County highway with a stack of paper he says represents the paychecks his company will issue Friday.

Wagner, a York County businessman and former state senator, tells viewers he is tired of the Democratic incumbent’s negative ads and Wolf’s refusal to debate him more than once. Pointing behind him, Wagner directs the video camera to a campaign billboard that says Wagner’s Penn Waste company sued 6,979 residents.

Wagner then complains about a TV ad that quotes newspaper editorials questioning whether Wagner has a conflict of interest over his past comments about how he will use his state Senate position to better his companies.

Finally, Wagner says he has not raised “the white flag” on the race, as Wolf’s campaign folks allege.

“Gov. Wolf, let me tell you between now and Nov. 6, you better put a catcher’s mask on your face because I’m going to stomp all over your face with golf spikes. Because I’m going to win for the state of Pennsylvania, and we are throwing you out of office because, you know what, I’m sick and tired of your negative ads,” Wagner says on the video. “So, Gov. Wolf, I am vowed and determined I’m going to vote you out of office. The people of Pennsylvania are going to vote you out of office on Nov. 6. Enough is enough.”

Wagner’s campaign spokesman Andrew Romeo said in an email statement: “Scott's comments were not to be taken literally. He wanted them to be a metaphor for how he will approach the final stretch of the campaign.

“Tom Wolf has spent the entire race hiding behind false and negative attack ads like a coward instead of debating in front of the people of Pennsylvania and Scott will spend the last month of the race making it clear to voters why they should not give him a second term,’ Romeo said.

The golf spikes video — as it is sure to go down in Pennsylvania political lore — is Wagner’s latest attempt to be a hard-charging, tough-talking businessman-turned-politician.

In August, Wagner made a Facebook video in which he ripped Wolf for visiting hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico. Wagner said Wolf was not doing enough for Pennsylvanians.

“I’m not trying to be politically correct and I won't be politically correct,” Wagner said in that video. “The governor going to Puerto Rico is pure bull----.”

In 2017, Wagner scuffled with a campaign tracker who was videotaping him at a political event at a private club. The attorney general’s office investigated the incident and opted not to charge Wagner or the tracker, who was employed by a liberal-leaning super PAC in Washington, D.C.

After he won a special election to the Senate in 2014, Wagner vowed to come to the Capitol and sit “in the back room with a baseball bat” to force Republican leaders to “start doing things” his way for the people of Pennsylvania.

On Friday, Wolf’s campaign spokeswoman Beth Melena said: “Scott Wagner’s latest rant shows he is unhinged and unfit for office. Threats of violence have no place in society, especially from someone running for public office. This is part of an unfortunate pattern with Scott Wagner.”

Wagner is trailing Wolf badly in both opinion polls and campaign money. It remains to be seen whether the video will change anyone’s mind — but it got folks talking.

“We are with you 100%,” Jeanne Cocline, a Centre County resident, wrote in the Facebook comments section of the new video. “Good is winning! You will be elected!”

“I love how this guy says he’s tired of Tom Wolf’s negative ads and then proceeds to talk about stomping on his face with golf spikes. UH WUT?!,” said another Facebook writer, Kate Cassidy Downing.

In his Friday evening YouTube video, Wagner said, “I may have chosen a poor metaphor. I may have had poor choice of words. I shouldn't have said what I said.”

Pennsylvania criminal law defines terroristic threats as communicating, either directly or indirectly, a vow to commit any crime of violence with intent to terrorize another, cause a building to be evacuated, or create a serious public inconvenience.

Federal law is basically the same thing.

But context matters when prosecutors decide to criminally charge someone for making a threat. That’s why some school children or adults are charged — and some are not — with crimes for using the internet, phones or a written note to convey violence against someone or some place.

Wagner’s speech doesn’t fall into the illegal category because he made it in the context of politics, experts say.

“Rhetorical hyperbole, not a true threat,” said David Hudson, a professor at the Nashville School of Law in Tennessee and ombudsman for the Newseum Institute's First Amendment Center in Washington, D.C.

“The fact that it’s part of a campaign video in what’s shaping up as a nasty campaign and it’s surrounded by language suggesting the people are going to vote Wolf out of office would immunize the speech against any legal action,” said Robert Richards, director of the Pennsylvania Center for the First Amendment at Penn State. “Now, if he shows up to the governor’s mansion in golf spikes and rings the doorbell, my analysis could change.”